


Skaia Sleeps Tonight

by TheSeer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Also Dave's irony game is legendary, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, He is doing it on purpose, Homelessness, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychological Trauma, Safewords, Urban Fantasy, Very post-Sburb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeer/pseuds/TheSeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here’s the thing, though. They’re called gods, they created the universe – but really they were just a bunch of traumatized, lonely kids. They did their best, they were creative and clever and kind and wise. But there are still a few things on Afterna that aren’t quite perfect, such as, for example, Karkat’s entire life.</p><p>His school is a slog, his job is a pit, his friends are all either homeless or turning into zombies, he’s in clubs between the most hopeless couple of losers the world has ever seen, his secret mythic Blood powers are only good for getting him spectacularly injured, there’s a shadowy organization trying to kidnap him, and now he’s falling in diamonds with a pokerfaced hipster showoff human who acts like he’s from another planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Karkat wished he could see the stars. The stars were supposed to be the faces of the gods – it had been years, sweeps, but he could remember every constellation like his own face in the mirror – and he wished he could see them again now, because he needed to give those twinkly fuckers a piece of his mind.

Maybe with pictures, shitty hand-drawn diagrams of how much they all sucked. Maybe some spitting. Definitely swearing.

No luck, though. All he could see up there was the yellow glow of reflected streetlights, on a layer of low clouds. And looking up made him dizzy anyway.

Karkat had lost kind of a lot of blood.

He was not going to be able to reach the fire escape, not like this. He stood on the corner and looked around vaguely, trying to figure out another way in, but it wasn’t a part of town where people left easy ways into their homes. He finally went up to the front door, and stood there for a while, swaying, his horns ringing.

If he was going to get help, this was the only choice. He needed someone who understood this mystical hoofbeastshit. With anyone else, he’d have to spend like two hours explaining why he needed a shower and a change of clothes instead of a hospital. But did he even really need help? It wasn’t like he was dying. And they weren’t chasing him, or he’d lost them. He’d probably lost them. Probably.

“Screw it.” He stabbed a finger at the intercom button, and missed. The door buzzed anyway, unlocked by another button inside and upstairs, and kept buzzing until Karkat managed to grab the handle and pull it open. “Yeah, yeah,” Karkat muttered, “show off some more, crotchflake.” There was an elevator, but it didn’t work. Karkat found the stairs and dragged himself up three flights, along to the seventh apartment on the left.

Dave was leaning against the doorframe. “Welp,” he drawled. “That sure is a whole lot of blood.” He was in pajamas, but his shades were on, and a scabbarded sword dangled by its belt from his left hand. “You got a little, uh.” He gestured vaguely, like he was trying to point out a crumb Karkat had dribbled on his shirt. “Uzi’ed.”

“I got Glocked, dumbass. Do you even know what an Uzi is? Move.” He shouldered past into the apartment, and Dave closed the door behind him.

“Seriously, dude, you’re supposed to carry your blood on the inside, it works better. Are you okay?”

“I’m always okay, Dave,” Karkat said, trying not to wobble. “Half the blood’s theirs, anyway.” Well. Some of it was. “Got the bullets out, wounds all closed. I’ve shown you my regen before. I just need to get cleaned up.”

“Uh huh,” Dave said, sounding skeptical. “Well, bathroom’s that way.” Karkat stumbled over, not bothering whatsoever to avoid the random crap on Dave’s floor. Once it was a glass bottle, which was almost bad, but Dave was suddenly next to him, catching his arm before his foot could roll out from under him.

“Thanks,” Karkat mumbled.

“Always.” Dave helped Karkat through the door, into a space that was in no way big enough for both of them. “Here, I’m gonna take your sickle, okay?” What? No. Karkat fumbled behind his back, and found the sickle still stuck into his waistband. “Hey, easy, I’m not trying to steal it,” Dave said, “it’s just in the way. Just set it on the tank, you’ll be able to reach it from the shower.” Karkat hesitated, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere in this tiny ablution block out of arm’s reach anyway. He pulled the weapon out and set it on the back of the load gaper. Dave’s sword was already leaning in the corner.

“Right, cool. So uh.” Dave had a handful of Karkat’s tattered sweatshirt. “I know this is all so terribly forward, oh la Mister Darcy, but you need a shower like the blazing surface of the sun needs a froyo stand and a swimming pool and if I leave you alone you’ll fall on your ass, so. Stop me if this gets weird, I guess?”

It took a second for Karkat’s fuzzy brain to decipher this babble. Okay, so Dave was doing the stereotypical human _what-no-this-isn’t-pale-all-friends-take-care-of-each-other_ thing. But at least he knew he was doing it, and he was clearing the air. Fine. “If by some arcane magic any tiny piece of this situation somehow ceases to be weird, I promise to implode from shock,” Karkat said. Then, parenthetically, 

“Fuck the gods.”

Dave stopped with Karkat’s shirt halfway up to his armpits. He was smirking. “Which gods?”

““I don’t even know,” Karkat said. “Whichever one set me up for this mythological clusterfuckery. Whatever I did wrong in my last life can’t have been bad enough to deserve this. Is there a god of terrible cosmic jokes and being way too amused by me flipping my everloving shit?”

“Yep.”

“That one, then. Fuck my fucking life, Dave.” He held his arms up so Dave could get his sweatshirt off. “You know, I actually used to think my blood thing was lucky? Figured it made me safer. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid me…”

“Dude, don’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you started the fight, right?” He dropped Karkat’s shirt on the floor. It went _schplot_.

“Hah. No. It was a fucking ambush. I got shot in the lung, Dave. Do you know what it feels like to get shot in the lung?”

“… nope,” Dave said, after a pause, as though he had to think about it. His fingers hovered over the raw pink spot on Karkat’s ribs, not quite touching. Little circle, and thin line across it. “Dunno what it feels like to cut the bullet back out, either.”

“No shit. Nobody does, because _that is not a normal thing to experience!_ Regular people don’t get to know that. Hooray for me, heights of physical trauma inaccessible to mortal trolls are mine to enjoy! Maybe next they can braid my shredded intestines with barbed wire! For science!”

Dave laid his fingertips on Karkat’s cheek. It hit him like a basin of ice water dumped over his head. He stopped talking, his eyes popped open, and, in three attempts, he pulled in a ragged breath. “Hey. Karkat. Stay with me, okay? Stay here.”

“Okay.” Karkat was staring into Dave’s eyes, or at least his sunglasses.

“We got this, dude.”

“Yeah.”

“All right, cool.” He took his hand off Karkat’s face, and Karkat’s brain turned back on. That. That was not covered by a _it’s-not-pale-it’s-human-friendship_ disclaimer. But before Karkat could decide what to do about it, Dave had gotten the rest of Karkat’s horrifying shot-up clothes off him and gently pushed him into the shower.

Gods, the hot water felt good.

After a few seconds Karkat figured he should actually wash instead of standing there, and bent over to pick up the soap. Everything faded to white, his horns were ringing again, and Dave was there, holding him up and getting his pajamas soaked. “Crap. Stay vertical, I got you. Just a sec.” He stepped out, took off what he was wearing – they also went _schplot_ , though this time it was only water. Then Dave was back. “I got you.”

“Sure,” Karkat said. He was distracted, because everything was spinning. He stood there and let Dave wash him, and gradually it occurred to him that Dave’s “I’m just here so you don’t fall down” attitude was so much bullshit. He was tender. He went more gently over every fading scar, as though they still hurt. (They didn’t. After getting so much of his super-blood all over his skin, Karkat was amazed the marks were even still visible.) Dave washed his hair last, and somehow shampoo-covered hands on Karkat’s scalp was the most intimate sensation he’d ever felt.

Shit. Karkat wasn’t this kind of troll. He was a fucking romantic, he wanted a _moirail_ , not a shooshbuddy. If someone had asked Karkat yesterday whether he’d let some guy he’d barely hung out with a few times trip him into a pile, the no would have broken glass and the curses after would have soured grubsauce. He shouldn’t be letting Dave do this, this was so stupid, but Karkat didn’t have enough blood in his brain and Dave’s hands had all the gentle and sweet that his face and words and douchey attitude never had and Karkat _needed_ something stupid right now.

So when Dave was done, and all the shampoo was rinsed out, Karkat quietly asked, “Can I have a hug?” Dave hugged him, tight – arms around his arms, chest against his back, cheek against his hair, with the hot shower pouring down over them both. The drain was running clear at last.

After quite a long time, Dave said, “You’re crashing here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He reached out and turned off the water, without otherwise moving. Then, after another reluctant pause, he let go. “I think I’ve got clean towels somewhere.”

He didn’t. Or at least, he was gone way too long looking for them. Karkat eventually dumped all the wet clothes in the bottom of the shower, grabbed his sickle, and poked his dripping head out the door. “When you said you had towels I thought you meant you had them, not that you were going to weave them on the spot from, I don’t know, pigeon down and pocket lint.”

“Catch,” Dave said, and tossed something at him. Karkat, still slow, let it bounce off his chest before he caught it. It was a plastic bottle, labeled as apple juice.

“I don’t even like human plant beverages.”

“Stop your blasphemy and drink,” Dave said. “Your blood pressure is crappy over fuck-all, you need fluids and sugar.” That was true enough. Karkat unscrewed the cap, made a face, and took a sip. It didn’t taste as bad as he’d expected, and even that one sip made him feel instantly better. He chugged the rest of the bottle.

When he finished, he opened his eyes to Dave tossing a towel over his head. “Found one, anyway.” He noogied Karkat’s hair dry, until Karkat took the towel away and took fluffy vengeance. Things got a little silly after that, ending with both of them sprawled on the couch and each other, each wearing half of Dave’s spare sleepwear. Dave had the oversized t-shirt, and Karkat had the floppy cotton shorts.

“Feeling better?” Dave asked.

“Yeah,” Karkat admitted. “Which is kind of fucked up, when I think about it. I… I killed two people tonight.” Karkat looked at Dave’s face, wondering how he’d take that. He may have guessed, but…

“Good.”

“What.”

Dave snorted. “Did you think I’d be all clutching my pearls? ‘Mercy me, killing people who were shooting you, how dare you?’ Whatever kept you alive out there is good with me.”

Who the hell could sound so matter of fact? “… have you ever?”

“Yup. Asshole went after my friends. That turned out to be a bad idea.”

Karkat bit his lip, fighting down a rush of emotion that was completely not appropriate to the topic. What kind of violent jackass felt pale at the suggestion that someone would kill for him? But Karkat couldn’t help but notice that even after the goofy towel fight, they both had their weapons within arm’s reach. “Who was it? What happened?”

“Hey,” Dave said, “I appreciate a good game of distract-everyone-from-your-feelings. I play that shit competitively, I’m going for the Olympics. But my combat trauma was a long time ago and yours was tonight, so maybe we can save my story for the second date?”

“Yeah, well,” Karkat said. He sat up a bit, hoping this would be easier to talk about if he wasn’t sprawling. Dave shifted too, but instead of matching him, he laid his head in Karkat’s lap, face up. Listening. Karkat blushed. “I’d just finished work, and I was walking back to campus. This car with its headlights off swerves in front of me, right onto the sidewalk. I turned around and there was another one behind me. A bunch of trolls get out with guns – they were all trolls, no humans. One of them told me to go with them, that they weren’t going to hurt me. ‘We don’t want to hurt you, Karkat.’”

“They knew your name?”

“Yeah, that freaked me out, too. I had a sickle in the back of my pants, under my shirt – I’m not stupid, I know I’m walking home alone at night. I tried to draw it slow, but half of them were behind me. Somebody shouted, ‘He’s armed, he’s armed,’ and one of the guns went off. Then I started moving fast. You haven’t seen me go fast…”

“You haven’t seen me go fast, either,” Dave said, smiling a little.

“Hmph.” Dave didn’t talk much about what he could do – well, neither did Karkat – but it had something to do with Time. “Well, they were surprised. Got the first two before they could aim.” Karkat drew a finger across his throat. “Then I got shot. In the leg. Which sucked because, first, I got _shot with a bullet_ and it really fucking hurt, and second, the super-badass magic blood that’s supposed to be in my veins is now in my sock, where it does jack shit.”

Karkat took a breath. “I… panicked, I guess. Like an idiot. I wasn’t bleeding that fast, I could have just… won, kept going, but I just wanted to get away. Make them stop. I tried to break through the other group, drop them quick so I could run. So of course, they both had guns, my sickle has maybe six inches of reach, I was running right at them – they shot the crap out of me. I don’t even remember how many shots, but I found three more holes in me later. Anyway, I didn’t hit them clean, because fucking _ow_. Slashed one in the arm, jabbed the other in the head, I think. But I didn’t stick around, I kept running. At least I didn’t get shot in the back. And if they followed me, they didn’t do it soon enough to catch me.”

“They thought they had a plan, and it turned out they had two corpses and some knife wounds,” Dave said. “Think about that the other way – they shot you four times and you kept swinging. I bet they were flipping the fuck out.”

“Yeah, well, they weren’t the only ones. I staggered into some alley and dug the bullets out, and finally noticed I didn’t even know where I was, let alone where I thought I was going. This was the only place I could think of, unless I just walked back to my dorm.”

“And they probably know where that is,” Dave said.

Karkat had not yet thought through the implications of being targeted by a planned ambush. He did that now, along with more breathing than was probably quite necessary.

“Whoa, hey,” Dave said. “Sh.”

“How long were they following me? Why didn’t I notice? Are they gonna go after my friends, or…”

Dave reached up from Karkat’s lap and touched his cheek. “It’s okay, man. They’re scared of being seen and now they’re scared of you, they won’t do anything too flashy.”

“How do you even know that?” Karkat asked, shivering at the touch but still breathing fast.

“They waited until you were out alone late at night,” Dave said, “and they didn’t chase you. Their boss is gonna be pissed, unless you killed him. So maybe they’ll try something. But it won’t be anything public. And if they know enough about Blood to go after you in the first place, they won’t mess with your friends.”

“You think they were after me because I have an Aspect?” Karkat thought about it. “Yeah, probably. Not like I have a family who would pay money to get me back.” Just a lusus who would get killed to get him back, fuck.

“No, shh.” Dave trailed across Karkat’s cheek with three fingers, and Karkat’s brain went mercifully blank. “Whatever they think they can do with a bag of magic blood, they’re gonna figure out pretty quick that it’s their veins getting opened, not yours. I’ll even help you if you want, I’m okay in a strife.”

No shit. Karkat wasn’t anything special at martial arts, he got by on superpowers and temper, but he knew a fighter when he saw one. Dave walked around his apartment like a tiger in a cage. And right now, being in the cage with the tiger was the safest feeling Karkat could imagine… “Y-yeah…”

“Yeah? Dude, you don’t need it, you’ve got these assholes cold, but say the word and I’m there. Whoever looks at you funny gets spiral-cut like grandma’s honey-glazed ham. I slice, I dice, I make Julienne fries.”

“Ugh, don’t sound so happy when you talk about hurting people. Barbarian.” But Karkat was smiling. “Here, you’re doing all the work…” He put a hand to Dave’s cheek, conveniently positioned in his lap. Dave leaned against his hand affectionately, but he didn’t seem to actually be pacified. “Shit, how do you pap a human?”

“Ears ping me pretty good,” Dave said. “Back of the neck. Bottom ribs on the side… nnn…” Karkat was running an experimental finger down the edge of Dave’s left ear. “Mm-hmmm…”

“Seriously, your ears? That’s adorable.” Dave didn’t answer. He was very lightly biting his bottom lip. “Wait, if it’s that different, where did you learn how to pap a troll?”

“Fr’m you…” Dave mumbled, followed by something that was either gibberish or ancient English.

“Bullshit,” Karkat said kindly. “Nobody’s that good the first time except in cheap pornos. There’s a really lucky troll in your backstory somewhere.”

“Well… yeah…”

“Can I take your sunglasses off?” Normally at a time like this Karkat wouldn’t need to ask, but since Dave had left the shades on when he took his pants off, it might be a touchy subject.

“Mm-hm…” Karkat pulled them off gently with his free hand, and set them folded on the arm of the couch. Dave’s eyes were closed underneath. “Does the world end if someone sees your eyes?”

“Did last time,” Dave said, and opened his eyes. They were just normal human eyes, except the ring between the white part and the black part was bright red, an eye color Karkat didn’t remember seeing before on a human. Or on a troll, for that matter, except in the mirror.

“Is this an Aspected thing?” Karkat asked. “Because if anybody walking by can go ‘ooh, red eyes, that kid’s got superpowers,’ then I’m going to need my own pair of pretentious shades.”

“Nah, you and me are just awesome like that,” Dave said. He sounded too coherent, so Karkat tried rubbing the back of his neck. Dave bit his lip again. “Ff, softer?” Karkat lightened up, going for the lightest brush of fingertips he could manage.

“On you, it’s pretty,” Karkat said.

“… sap…”

Karkat was very much not bored. But he was on a mostly-diurnal schedule for school, and it was late enough that the time no longer began with a prime number. He tried to hide the yawn but Dave caught him. “Awright, short stuff, bedtime.” Dave yawned himself, stretching without getting up. “I can crash on the couch if you don’t want company.”

Karkat actually had to think about that for a few seconds, though only because he liked the idea of a guard at the door. “Together?”

“Sure.” Dave rolled to his feet. “Is this your first time sleeping in a bed? Do I get to teach you what spooning is?”

“No and hell no,” Karkat said, standing up less gracefully. “I didn’t actually have a cupe until I was four. And trolls invented spooning. How would that even work in a bed? My whole weight would be on your arm.”

“Does that mean you want to be the little spoon?”

“Not if I’m going to wake up looking at your gangrenous hand after lying on it all night.”

Typically, Dave took that as a yes.

Sleeping dry was not Karkat’s favorite thing, but it was different with Dave’s snuggleplane tucked carefully over his shoulders and Dave himself holding him tight from behind. The weight and touch felt safe and reassuring instead of intrusive and restraining. And Dave kept nuzzling the back of his head.

Halfway to sleep, Karkat remembered something, and chuckled. “Hey, you know what I was worried about a few hours ago? My bulgeknocker boss was yelling at me for talking back to a customer who believed in coffee emergencies. I thought I was gonna get fired.”

Dave said something like _nn_ and shifted a bit. Karkat tried to laugh again, but it sounded sort of flat. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” he mumbled. “I’m supposed to be the incarnation of a primal mythological force.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dave said. Karkat hadn’t even been sure he was still awake. “Never feels that way. It’s okay.”

“Bearers of legendary power aren’t supposed to fuck up this much.”

“We always fucked up, dude. It’ll be okay.”

So they fell asleep, a couple of fuckup kids curled up in a bed. If one of them had a nightmare, it vanished in their touch, it was forgotten by morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Karkat woke up sore and cold, staring out the window at the fog. Fog, again. And it had to be nearly noon. The climate in this damn city needed to go fuck itself. Not that Karkat wanted sunshine – he was pretty much burn-proof but full double-sunlight made him squint and stumble like any other troll – but the air was clammy and cold, and Karkat’s snuggleplane was gone.

Why was Karkat’s snuggleplane gone.

He had definitely fallen asleep with a snuggleplane. In fact, he’d had two if you counted Dave, and it was a tossup which had been wrapped around him tighter. Karkat hadn’t really expected Dave to still be hugging him when he woke up but it would have been really nice if the _inanimate fucking object_ had decided to stick around since Karkat was naked from the waist up and it was _cold_.

He tried to sit up to look for it. He failed. There was something really heavy lying across the back of his knees and he couldn’t roll over. Karkat twisted the other way, managed to get a look at the problem, and said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

It was Dave. Twisted around, sprawled sideways across the bed, with the covers completely wrapped around him. He must have turned over in his sleep so many times that he rolled them up, like toilet paper you turned out not to need. “Dave,” Karkat said. “Dave. Wake up. Dave, you egregiously oversized cocoon-bug, I will dump you on your own fetid floor if you don’t wake up and get off my legs.”

Karkat got his hands under him and pushed up, keeping his knees straight. He had no trouble lifting Dave a few inches that way, but Dave had no trouble sleeping while draped over Karkat’s legs like a wet rag. Nor did he slide down and fall off the bed like Karkat had been hoping.

Karkat reached back, grabbed a corner of the blanket, and tugged. He was picturing the toilet paper scenario in the other direction, again with the goal of rolling Dave onto the floor. All he managed to do was pull the whole Dave-cocoon a foot or so forward, where it was harder to hold up. Karkat let himself flop back onto his face. “DAVE!”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my fucking gods, if you’ve been awake this whole time and messing with me I’m going to dump you face first in the load gaper.”

“Nah.” Dave shifted a bit, which was the first time he’d moved. “What.”

“You’re pinning me down and hoarding the snuggleplane, that’s what.”

“Somewhere to go?”

“Well I have a class at three-thirty,” Karkat said, “but if you’d rather I just lay here, piss your bed, and then freeze to death…”

“What class? What time. Oh.” He starts to actually move. “Hi, Karkat. I forgot…”

“Good morning, starshine,” Karkat said sarcastically. “How do you sound so deadpan when you’re half asleep?”

“Ancient discipline. Order of the Ironic Coolkid. Harsh training forbidden for centuries. Here.” Dave sat up enough to unwind the snuggleplane, and Karkat pulled it around his shoulders. Dave laid back down next to Karkat instead of on top of him and took the other half.

“What time is it?” Karkat asked. There was no alarm clock next to the bed. There was no clock at all, he realized, in the entire apartment. Even the microwave in the other room had been blinking 12:00, like it had never been set.

“Twelve nineteen,” Dave said. “How long’s your walk back to campus?”

“Not three hours,” Karkat said. “I’ve got some time.”

“How’re you feeling?”

Karkat stretched, and the last ache vanished with a pop as blood flowed back into his muscles. “Better. Thirsty, I guess.” Dave fumbled a hand under the bed, and came up with another bottle of apple juice. “Ugh,” Karkat said, but drank it, because getting anything else to drink would require getting out of bed and maybe leaving the apartment.

“Don’t make that face at my AJ,” Dave said. His eyes were closed, he couldn’t even see Karkat’s face. “That is the 100% genuine ambrosia of the gods. Officially endorsed and all that shit. Got its picture on the cereal box.” That was backwards, if the gods had endorsed apple juice they would have their pictures on the juice bottle. But Karkat didn’t want to talk about Dave’s incomprehensible plant beverage bullshit.

“So,” Karkat said, sitting up and hugging his knees under the blanket. “Last night.”

Dave stretched, opened his eyes, and smirked at Karkat. “Lemme guess. Your wanton behavior torments you, you can’t live with the shame, we must never speak of it again?”

“What? No, fuck you.” Dave obviously hadn’t been serious, but still. “It was really good. Uh, of you. You know, because I needed – I wasn’t thinking all that clear, and you – thanks.”

“Man, you don’t even know, my snuggle swag is legendary. Once I smiled by accident walking by the zoo, and the lions are still playing with yarn and eating kitty kibble.” As Dave delivered that ridiculous line, though, he was rubbing his cheek and smiling sleepily. With no shades on. He looked completely vulnerable and adorable and – Karkat made himself finish what he was going to say.

“Look. I know we don’t know each other all that well. A few evenings hanging out on your fire escape and talking about supernatural shit – we were just friends. Are friends. But if I ever needed to be piled within an inch of my life it was last night.” Karkat managed not to wince when he said it. He wasn’t ashamed of sleeping with Dave, he wasn’t. It was the rest of it that hurt, the lack of a relationship or any non-emergency jams beforehand, or even a date. “I just want you to know, I’m really glad we had a one night stand, and I don’t expect us to magically become moirails. No pressure or expectation or anything weird. I’m glad we’re friends.” Karkat wanted to look over to see how Dave was taking this, but he… well, he didn’t.

For ten torturous seconds, Dave didn’t say anything. “Not ready to lock down the quadrant, huh? Living the wild college life?”

“I’m trying to be a _gentleman_ , shitsponge,” Karkat snarled at his own knees. “You were here when I really needed it, I’m not going to pay that back by being a completely forward creepbag and parking myself uninvited on your…”

“I love you.”

Now Karkat looked. Dave was staring back at him. He looked completely serious, but then he always looked like that. “What.”

“I love you. I want your diamond. I’m gay for your emotions. The United Nations can all go home, this is the pinnacle of historic-level pacification. Apprentice paint-mixers learning about light colors make pilgrimages to study these feels, and leave weeping in jealousy because they will never match my infinite paleness for you.” Karkat tried to talk, but nothing came out. He probably looked like a fish, if fish blushed. “So,” Dave said. “Just putting that out there.”

“Bfuh. You. Holy shit, Dave. You don’t think that was a little too soon?” As he said it, though, he felt a wave of guilt. Six-sweep-old Karkat, curled up in the basement with VHS tapes of old romantic movies, would not have called the morning after getting piled “too soon” for _I love you._ More like the other way around.

“Well, I’ve tried ‘too late’ before,” Dave said. Karkat winced at this echo of his thoughts. “Wasn’t my fave. Figured I’d do something different.”

Karkat tried to think of something that would let him decide what the hell to do with this. “What do you think about serendipity?”

“The fated romance thing?” Dave shrugged. “Never really bought that. Like the gods are supposed to take a personal interest in my love life specifically? Don’t they have better things to do? I just try to stick with people who make me happy.”

That was the sweetest shitting-all-over-his-heartfelt-beliefs Karkat had ever experienced. In the realms of removing confusion and telling Karkat what to do now, it did absolutely jack shit.

“Hey,” Dave said, “making you freak out was kind of the opposite of what I was going for, there. From what you were saying, it sounded like we were doing okay last night. I thought it’d be good news.” When Karkat looked again, he noticed Dave was sitting very still, and not looking away. Was he nervous? 

“It’s,” Karkat fumbled, “it’s not _bad_ , I…” Past-Karkat was screaming at the screen, in between sniffles: _Say it! Say it, fuckass! You’re meant to be together! You have to get together, just say it!_ Easy for him to say. A movie protagonist would only be in this position in the first place if they were supposed to be together. A movie protagonist couldn’t just be a slut. If he said he was pale for Dave now, was he just trying to retcon last night into something decent? “I…”

“Oh shit,” Dave said, “hang on, sorry.” He scrambled out of bed like he’d suddenly forgotten something. Past-Karkat howled in frustration.

“What the fuck?”

“Pants,” Dave said. Then he was standing in front of his shitty secondhand dresser, hopping his way into a pair of jeans that must have come from a now-open drawer. He had his aviators on already. Karkat hadn’t even seen him move. “Chill, it’s not a fight. Stay here.” Then he was gone. Karkat managed to see a blur this time.

From out in the other room, Karkat heard one knock and the door opening, almost at the same time. “’Sup, Pyrope?”

There was a pause, and then a voice like a lawnmower eating a bag of gravel. “I’m Detective Connolly, COWAS PD. Looks like you already know Detective Pyrope. We need to ask you a few questions.”

“I didn’t do it,” Dave said instantly.

“We both know what you did, coolkid.” That’s a third voice, female, trollish accent. Sharp and exasperated, but Karkat could hear her grinning. Karkat figured that this was Detective Pyrope.

“Did you see anything strange last night?” Connolly grumbled, ignoring them both. “We got a call about one AM reporting someone who might be sick or injured in this neighborhood.” Oh. Duh. Karkat had staggered down the street like a lost soul, completely soaked in five colors of blood, and yeah it had been late but this was still a big fucking city and someone was always awake. Of course someone had called the cops. Karkat got up and went by the door so he could hear better.

“Psh, come on,” Dave said. “You’re the Special Investigations squad. If they sent you, it means you got a call reporting a zombie on Market Street – after midnight, so obviously it’s bullshit, but they’re gonna make you check it out anyway.”

“You know what, buddy,” Connolly said, in a voice no more horrible than it was before, “if you’re gonna be a wiseass, how about you canvas the neighborhood and we go get drunk. Did you see anything strange last night?”

“Nah, the insides of my eyelids looked about like usual.”

Oh holy shit. Fuck. Karkat had been wondering – if Dave knew who was coming and why, which it looked like it had been, why he’d told Karkat to stay here instead of coming out to explain what had happened. But now he’d _lied to the cops_ , what the fuck. And Karkat couldn’t go out there now, or they’d know Dave had lied to them…

“Are you aware of any other odd events or people in the neighborhood lately?” Pyrope asked.

“You mean freaky magic shenanigans? Nope. Been a quiet month.” Wait, if he was going to admit to believing in magic then what the fuck was Dave even hiding?

Connolly was muttering something like _Pyrope’s fucking nutcases_ , except if Karkat could hear it through the door it wasn’t quiet enough. “Not just that,” Pyrope said. “Have you seen any suspicious groups or vehicles in the area?”

“Oh fer gods’ sake, Pyrope,” Connolly interrupted her, “would you knock it off about the Hive Street shooting? It’s not our case. The Organized Crime guys don’t want your help, and I don’t blame em.” Wait. Hive Street was on Karkat’s route from work back to campus. Was that where he’d gotten jumped? He didn’t actually remember that part, vivid images of the fight washed out his memory of the minutes before and after.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pyrope said, and then, in an exaggeratedly well-behaved voice, “Thanks for your time, sir. Ah, before we go, could I use your ablution block?”

Oh, shit, Karkat’s bloody shot-up clothes were still in the bottom of the shower. “Nope.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. Later, coolkid.”

“Hey, don’t look so stressed, Pyrope,” Dave said, “Zombies are no prob for you, you’ve got those, what are they, Glocks?”

“… yes, actually,” Pyrope said, over her partner’s _you think we give Pyrope bullets you’re outta your damn mind._

“Whoa, really?” Dave said. “I thought I was full of shit. Then, yeah, the two of you are definitely equal to whatever you’re looking for.”

“… Thanks, coolkid,” Pyrope said, and the door closed.

A few seconds later, the respiteblock door opened. Karkat was sitting with his back to the wall beside the door, head on his knees. “Um,” Dave said. “Shit. Am I allowed to hug you?”

“Yes.”

Dave sat down next to him, put an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, dude, they’re harmless. Pyrope’s cool, and the other guy’s just some random shitty cop. SI is the asshole of the department, everyone they get is either crazy or stupid.”

“I wasn’t scared of the cops, Dave! At least not until you pulled that stupid bullshit. What the fuck was that?”

“I… covered for you?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Karkat choked. He couldn’t shout, the two detectives might still be close enough to hear. “Well, yeah, okay, I did, I killed two people, but I didn’t do anything illegal, it was self defense!”

“Did you really want to explain that to them, though? Including why they went after you?” Dave seemed actually confused, like he was surprised that Karkat wasn’t grateful.

“Where are you even from, you incomprehensible douchebag,” Karkat mumbled. Dave didn’t answer that. “Hey, Dave. Do we turn out okay?”

“What?”

“You can see the future, I just watched you do it. Does this thing,” Karkat squeezed Dave’s hand draped over his shoulder, “turn out okay?”

“I dunno, dude. It doesn’t work like that. My precog is really crappy, it’s a cross-class power.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Awright,” Dave said, “so, your Aspect is like, what your powers are based on.”

“The primal mythological force, yeah,” Karkat said. “I know that part. I’ve got Blood, you’ve got Time, there’s a bunch more. Your powers are stronger because Time was one of the gods’ Aspects.”

“My powers are stronger,” Dave said, “because of my inherent awesomeness. I am fucking legend up in here. But yeah. Class is like the other half, it’s what kind of stuff you can do with your powers. I’m a Knight, I’m about laying the smackdown and saving the day.”

“’Knight?’” Karkat said. “Wow, that doesn’t have religious connotations or anything.”

“Get used to it, you’re another one. Actively protecting the blood, or using blood to protect.” That last sentence was in a textbook-quoting sort of tone, though if there was an actual book about all this Karkat had never heard of it.

Well, except for the Canon, and lesser epics and collections of myths. Karkat had actually taken Comparative Mythology last semester, hoping to figure out more about this stuff. But the old stories didn’t really go into technicalities, or the sort of detail you needed if you wanted to actually use these powers.

“So anyway,” Dave said, “anything good in a strife works really well for me. I could flash step before I even knew other people couldn’t. Looking at the future, though, I don’t get much. I didn’t use to get anything. Now I can see maybe the next thing I’ll need to dodge, and if there’s a serious badass incoming I’ll know just in time, like last night.”

Karkat blushed at that description, then felt bad for feeling flattered by something like that. “So how’d you see the cops coming? You just said they sucked.”

Dave shrugged. “Carruthers or whatever, he probably sucks. Mess with Pyrope and she will fuck your shit up. Well, probably not _you_ you, I bet she’d think you’re funny, but if you were some other asshole she would.”

“So you can’t see anything actually useful,” Karkat summarized, “like how a relationship goes.”

“Not unless you go for the sickle-in-the-eye style breakup,” Dave agreed. “So, how do you want it to go? Because you didn’t sound too thrilled earlier, and I want a pity date but I don’t want a _pity_ date, you know?”

It took Karkat about five seconds to get the reference. “Holy shit, did you learn about troll romance exclusively from Troll Shakespeare? That has to be the first time in five hundred years that anyone has used the word ‘pity’ to mean redrom. And yes, I…” Karkat hesitated, and decided that past-him could just shut the fuck up. “I’m really glad you feel that way,” he said instead. He snuggled against Dave’s side as he said it, and so he could feel the sudden relaxation in Dave’s muscles. He glanced up. Dave’s face was carefully blank. “Holy shit, you were terrified, weren’t you?”

“What? No. Totally chill, I’m fine with whatever…”

“You are so full of shit. You’re supposed to be vulnerable to your moirail, dumbass. It’s the entire point of the relationship, and also completely fucking adorable.”

“I’m definitely not adorable,” Dave said. But there was a touch of emotion in his voice as he said it, happy or touched or relieved, something that wasn’t just his usual measured drawl. It was a start.


	3. Chapter 3

Karkat stepped out into the street wearing a pink hoodie, black basketball shorts that were supposed to be loose and floppy but weren’t, and wet sneakers with no socks. It looked about as stupid as he’d thought it would. Maybe the fog would get thicker and no one would actually see him.

Dave came out behind him and flipped the hood up over Karkat’s head. “Don’t get sunburn.”

Karkat pushed the hood back down. “I can’t get sunburn, asshole. Any burn short of blisters heals as fast as it forms.”

Dave pulled the hood back up. “Fine, don’t get eyestrain.”

Karkat pulled it back down, harder. “Even if the suns were out, which they aren’t, this thing doesn’t shade my eyes. And it does cover my ears and horns, so if it actually got bright enough that I had to rely on hearing and motion-sense I’d be fucked. Congratulations, your shitty human excuse for a suncloak is literally worse than useless.”

Dave flipped the hood up again. “It’s cute though.”

“Puh. Bfuh. You fucking jackass.” Karkat raised his hands to push the hood down, hesitated, and decided not to bother. It wasn’t that bright out, and the hood didn’t really muffle his ears and horns much. 

In theory, wearing your moirail’s clothes was supposed to be romantic. (Well. Maybe not moirail. Pale-mumble-something-it’s-complicated.) In practice, Dave was a completely different size from him in every dimension, so only the loosest things he owned would go on Karkat at all, and they were still too tight and too long.

“Well,” Karkat grumbled, “since you’re coming along for some reason, let’s go.” Okay, so he knew why Dave was coming. And walking someone to class wasn’t supposed to be that big a deal. But in this case the class was nearly two miles away, so it felt like more of the “too soon” thing. Karkat half-wished he hadn’t let Dave come.

“Where’d they try to grab you?” Dave asked.

Karkat looked around. “I don’t even remember. I guess it may have been on Hive Street? Between Twelfth and Maple, since that’s the part I walk going home.”

“Awright. Let’s not get too close.”

Karkat shrugged. “I kind of want to see where it happened.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dave said. “So might the assholes who tried to grab you. And a smart cop would be watching for you and them both.”

“Oh,” Karkat said. He thought about that for a second. “We’re going to have to cross Hive Street somewhere.”

“Yeah, okay, but not right where it happened.” Karkat nodded, took a left, and headed up Twelfth.

Sure enough, as they crossed Hive, Karkat saw some kind of scene a couple blocks down. There were a couple cop cars, and what looked like that yellow POLICE-LINE-DO-NOT-CROSS tape. “No ambulances or anything, though,” Karkat noticed. “Or news trucks. Shouldn’t there be more of a thing, if there were…” Two dead bodies, was the end of that question, not that Karkat was saying that out loud in public.

Dave shrugged. “By the time they showed up, there probably weren’t.” Karkat looked again, trying to imagine that. The two who hadn’t died… what, taking the bodies away? Like in the trunks of their cars? The cars weren’t there, anyway. So the cops were investigating… reports of gunshots? Maybe some bloodstains?

This was so weird to think about. “How are you so fucking calm?”

“That’s just me, epically cool about all things. Restraining my humiliating freakouts so I can be all pale and supportive for you.”

Karkat frowned. He’d seen Dave faking cool, and this didn’t look like that. At least, Karkat didn’t think so. The only time he’d been completely sure, he’d been leaning on Dave’s shoulder… oh, hey.

Karkat reached over and put a hand on Dave’s chest, in the little hollow right under his collarbone. Dave looked at Karkat’s hand, then up at his face. “Well, hello to you too.” The muscles under Karkat’s hand were loose and relaxed.

“You are so full of shit,” Karkat said, taking his hand back. 

“Dude, did you just read me like Braille?” Dave was making that ironic little smirk again, but there was a little flush of color on the edges of his ears.

“Get used to it,” Karkat growled, “you’re not as mysterious as you think you are.” It was… not the most hostile growl Karkat had ever produced. There was _maybe_ a little edge of a purr in the sound. Maybe. Just because of Dave’s stupid adorable human ears. 

“You have not even begun to plumb my mysteries,” Dave said, “and wow that sounded a lot less wrong in my head.”

Karkat snickered. “If you call them your ‘mysteries’ then nobody’s going to fucking ‘plumb’ them, you corny dumbass. They’re not ancient secrets never touched by man or troll.”

“Nah, of course not, I have to beat ‘em off with a stick.” Dave thought about that, and blushed a little more. “All the mad suitors, I mean, who want to get down with those things that I just accidentally described as mysteries but actually constitute my famous swag, because they, the suitors, are so many that I have to fend them away with some kind of long wooden pole and you know what, this entire line of conversation is probably a bad idea and I’m going to shut up now.” Karkat had been trying to stop himself from laughing out loud, but now he gave up.

“You are going to be so much fun to jam with,” Karkat blurted. Shit, was that more retconning, or… Dave opened his mouth a couple times but stopped before he actually said anything. Karkat didn’t want to leave him like that. He grabbed hold of Dave’s hand.

Dave smirked, and said “Okay,” and they walked along like that for a while.

A couple blocks later, as they were waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street, Karkat’s hornsense picked up someone moving, too close behind him. He glanced back. There was a little kid with big horns there. Dave and Karkat let go of each others’ hands, reached out and grabbed one horn each – Karkat because he recognized the kid, and Dave presumably because he felt the kid’s hand in his back pocket. “Wow, that sucked,” Dave said. “Do you even lift, bro?”

“Damn it, Rufioh,” Karkat groaned. 

Rufioh squirmed – he had Dave’s wallet right in his hand, but he wasn’t getting away. He was about four sweeps old, maybe a scrawny five, and probably couldn’t have overpowered even a normal adult. All his wiggling didn’t even make Karkat’s hand move. “… oh. Hi, Karkat, I didn’t recognize you in that hood. You know this guy?”

“Lucky for you,” Dave said.

Rufioh laughed nervously and put the wallet back.

Karkat let go of his horn. “You told me you weren’t doing this anymore. Last week you were face-curdlingly smug about your new crew.”

“Creepers found where they were crashing. We bounced.”

“Where’s your lusus?” Dave asked, which meant he wasn’t following the slang too well, despite the stupid pun.

Rufioh made a face, and said _psshht_. Karkat caught Dave’s eyes and shook his head.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Karkat growled. “It’s like two in the afternoon. I wish I was asleep.”

“I’m fine,” Rufioh said, and promptly yawned. “Anyway, we gotta eat, right?

From Dave’s face, he was starting to get the picture. He let go of Rufioh’s other horn. The kid shook his head and rubbed the bases of both horns, looking grumpy. “See, you keep using pronouns that mean more than one person,” Dave said, “which is why I’m confused about the lack of any white-furred whateverbeasts that I’m apparently not supposed to talk about.”

Rufioh blinked. “What?”

Dave sighed. “Who’s ‘we?’”

The kid looked up at him with big, innocent eyes. “Me ‘n my doll.” Karkat rolled his eyes – Rufioh was getting too old for that line to work. Judging by Dave’s twitch, though, it worked this time. Maybe Dave didn’t see enough kids to judge ages well. “Can I go now?”

Karkat shoved a five-spot down the back of his t-shirt. He squawked and squirmed and pulled it out, then grinned at Karkat when he saw what it was. “Get a hot dog,” Karkat said. “Get to sleep. And don’t try to lift from _humans_ in the _daytime_ , you pan-damaged kneebiter, they can see and you can’t.” Rufioh ran off. Dave gave Karkat a look. “What? It’s five marks. I’m not that poor.”

“You don’t think that was kind of fucked up?” Dave asked.

“Ugh.” Karkat rubbed his temples. “Look, he knows I’m not a fan of the stealing, but if I tell him not to he’ll just ignore me. He’s right, he does have to eat. So I’d rather he gets the barest bottom-scraping scrap of safety in his shitty-ass life.”

Dave tilted his head. “Yeeeeeah, that’s not really the fundamental problem here. I was sort of more concerned about the fact that a really tiny kid was alone and homeless and starving in the first place.”

Karkat bristled. “It’s not like it’s rare. It’s not his fault.”

“Dude, what? That’s completely not what I’m trying to say. Can’t you, I dunno, call someone? Get some foster parents up in here? ‘Please sir can I have some more?’”

“He got picked up for petty theft, the city kicked him off the orphanage waiting list.” Dave was looking at him like he was speaking ancient Alternian. “What are they supposed to do? There’s blood types with an unclaimed-wriggler rate of fifteen grubfucking percent, and the city council’s whining over orphanage funding raises the godsdamn hive-shading structure as it is without trying to help ‘criminals.’” He glared at Dave. “Yeah, of course it’s shit, but the lusus shortage is fifty years old, so where the fuck have _you_ been?”

“Whoa, hey. I’m sorry, what…?”

Karkat bit his lip, ignored the hurt in the curl of Dave’s mouth, and turned around. “I don’t have time for this right now, I need to be going to Sociology 101, not teaching it.”

“Yeah, okay, fine. Whatever. Topic dropped. Am I still allowed to walk down the street, or is that forbidden, too?” He was, to be more specific, walking down the street right beside Karkat, who groaned.

“That was the crankiest, most passive-aggressive request to walk someone to class I have ever fucking heard. Which is impressive, since I was there for the snarkfest twenty minutes ago when we embarked on this douchetastic adventure to education-land.”

“Yeah, whatever, man. I dunno why you think flipping off the handle is gonna change what I do. It’s just the way you always act anyway.”

Okay, ouch. Did that mean Dave always got upset when Karkat showed temper? The way Dave acted, Karkat could actually believe it happened every time and this was just the first time he’d noticed it. That was going to make for a great fucking moirallegiance. Karkat gets angry, Dave hides a flinch, nobody talks about it, repeat every five minutes until someone has the common godsdamn sense to break this disaster off. Fuck.

“Wow, thanks for showing off your avoidant behavior patterns, taintsniff,” Karkat said. “That would be great if you were trying to help me with my psych homework instead of, you know, building an actually functional relationship.”

“Aw, man, no,” Dave said, “don’t you start with the psycho-babble bullshit. I’m already way over my usual brain-nerd-nonsense limit of zero per forever.”

Karkat raised one eyebrow. “What, didn’t I tell you my major?” He might not have, he was used to being asked. He’d spent the last six months in a world where _what’s your major_ was the last word in stupid small talk. One sleepy pre-med had asked him his major before she knew his name.

“Film, right?” Dave said.

“No, not that I wouldn’t make a better – social work. I’m studying social work.”

“So, what, Introduction to Talking? Homework: throw a sick party?”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “That’s not what it means, dumbass. It’s like being a psychologist, except instead of staying in school for five extra sweeps so you can make a hundred marks an hour talking to rich humans, you go out and actually help people.”

“… huh,” Dave said. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d go for that, since you basically just described a pale hooker.”

“The term is _conciliatory laborer_ , bulgeknot. And most troll-ruled cities actually did ban psychological research back in the Middle Ages for pretty much that reason, and given the state of professional ethics back then they might have had a fucking point.” Karkat gave Dave a nervous glance. “You aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Nah, not unless your future job involves taking your shirt off and rubbing people’s ears.”

Karkat blushed. “Good. One of my outer leaves is.”

“Your outer… oh.” The corner of Dave’s mouth twitched up. “You’ve got an ashen thing going on? I can’t wait to see you making two horny assholes shut up and sit down.”

More blushing, and a rough shove to Dave’s shoulder. “Ugh, you want to watch? That’s sick.” Then, hypocritically, “And if you figure out how to make those two douches shut up for any three consecutive seconds I will tag the fuck out and let you take middle leaf. Godsdamn.” 

They were at the edge of campus now. With all the fog, the actual buildings were just vague shapes. All Karkat could really see was the brick wall around campus, and the wrought-iron gate standing wide open. Dave stopped, and then so did Karkat. “Guess I’ll see you later,” Dave said.

Karkat shuffled his sneaker. “Hey, I’m… I maybe kind of snapped at you before. Youth homelessness is kind of a touchy subject, it makes me an asshole sometimes.” Dave didn’t answer, and Karkat made himself say the word. “Sorry.”

Dave stared. “You never…”

“Oh, shut up, I totally did, I saw your face. Take a fucking apology, all right?”

“… awright,” Dave said, and made a diamond shape with his fingers. “Bask in my infinite mercy. Hey, you said ‘touchy subject,’ does that mean we’ve got something to jam about next time?”

“You promised to talk about your combat trauma on the second date,” Karkat pointed out. Then, finally remembering the obvious, “Oh, hey, there’s a phone in my dormblock, do you want the number? Two two seven…”

“Two four six six,” Dave finished. “Yeah, we’re cool. I’ll tell you mine when I call so you can write it down.” Karkat had completely forgotten telling Dave his number. When had that happened? “Go learn how to save the world, dude. I’ll talk to you later.”

Dammit, Dave just tossed lines like that out like it wasn’t even a big deal. Karkat tried to think of something to say, failed, and settled for copying Dave’s finger-diamond. Then he went to class.


	4. Chapter 4

Mostly the City of Wind and Shade was a blustery grey shithole, but Karkat thought the UHB campus was actually pretty, in an aging-emo sort of way. Grey marble, dark red bricks, winding paths through grassy quads. Karkat figured it was probably haunted. Not because it was scary, but because it seemed like a nice place to chill for a while before moving on to the next life.

He’d gone to Sociology, and then he’d gone to Ancient History (which he was only taking for the professor, it wasn’t in his major) and he’d taken notes on borrowed paper with a borrowed pen. Nobody had cared or even noticed that he was dressed in Dave’s ill-fitting idiot clothes. For some reason, Karkat found their failure to point and laugh vaguely offensive.

And now he got to go, if not home, at least to his own personal dorm block. Where he could finally chill out, and throw something in the VCR, and not have to worry about any confusing bullshit for a few hours. Well, okay, and he had a reading to do for Psych. And maybe he should hit the library and start on that History paper...

Nope. Eighteen hours ago Karkat had been shot in the lung. _Shot in the lung._ So what if he had healed, that was ridiculous, he shouldn’t have to deal with that. And he was done with class, and he didn’t have work today, and he was going to sit down, and relax, and watch a movie and sleep in a recuperacoon and just not give a fuck. Karkat had no more fucks to give, he was out of fucks.

He let himself in to his dorm and trudged up the stairs. He met someone on her way down, an acquaintance who had the dorm block next to his. “Oh, hey, Karkat, people were looking for you.”

“Hi, Sam. I’m fine.” Living in a co-ed dorm was even less weird than Karkat had expected when he moved in – it was actually pretty cool having humans around. “Shit happened, I slept off campus, back now. Where are you headed, the dining hall?”

“I’m gonna go study in the library, it’s a bit loud up there right now.” She glanced back up the stairs, and in the pause Karkat heard voices echoing down. Angry, shouty, familiar voices. “Maybe you want to get up there?”

“Oh, fuck me,” Karkat groaned, and stomped on up the stairs. As he got closer, the voices got clearer.

“… wrong with you, get the fuck out of my block.”

“Well excuse me for pointing out the obvious, it’s not like we’re rivals or anythin’.”

The door to the dormblock Karkat shared was ajar, that’s why the voices were so clear. “That’s not rivalry, that’s just you being a bulge. Go the fuck away, you’re intolerable, gods.”

“Wow, Sol, you didn’t talk to me like that when Kar was around…”

“Get off me!”

Karkat kicked the door open. “I WAS GONE FOR ONE NIGHT!” Sollux had his back to the wall. Eridan was staggering backwards away from him, like he’d been shoved. They both turned to stare.

“Kar?”

“KK!”

Eridan looked queasy. Sollux looked relieved. “One godsdamned night, and I come back to find you two practically fucking on my desk!” Karkat stepped in and slammed the door behind him. Okay, so he was a loud auspistice, that was no reason to leave the door open and actually invite the whole hall to listen.

“Hey, c’mon, Kar, it wasn’t…”

“Eridan, Sollux told you to get out of our room.”

“But…”

“Get the hell out,” Karkat grated, “or I will pick your fancy ass up and carry you. We are going to have a _talk_.”

“Thank you,” Sollux said.

“And you!” Karkat wheeled on him. “Clock.”

“Oh come on, I was…”

“Check the fucking clock, Sollux, how many hours have you been awake.” Karkat knew the answer, he’d been here when Sollux got up yesterday and he was wearing the same clothes. From his flinch when he looked at the clock, though, Sollux actually had lost track of time.

“Twenty-three,” he grumbled. “I’ve got homework, this douchebag kept interrupting me…”

Karkat lowered his voice, chose his words carefully. “You promised me, Sollux. No more than eighteen hours up in a row, even if it’s just a nap. I can’t believe you won’t even take basic minimum care of yourself if I’m not in your face every minute.” He and Sollux swore and shouted at each other all the time, swearing and shouting meant they were having fun. Quiet and serious made Sollux _squirm_. “You’d better be in your cupe when I get back.” Karkat yanked the door open again. “Move, Eridan.”

“Kar, I…”

Push. Eridan stumbled out into the hallway, and Karkat went out after him. “Is your room empty?” Eridan nodded, and unlocked the door across the hall for them. 

“Look, Kar,” Eridan said, “you weren’t supposed to see that, I didn’t think you were comin’ back...”

“Wait, hold on,” Karkat said. He rummaged through the bottom drawer of Eridan’s dresser, and pulled out a grey sock (Karkat’s sock, actually, left from last time, because Eridan didn’t own anything grey.) Karkat opened the door agan, pulled the sock over the knob on the outside, and closed it again. If Eridan’s roommate showed up, she’d know not to barge in. “There. Now, what was that stupid excuse you were tripping over?”

Karkat could see the moment Eridan decided to try a different line. “It wasn’t what you think, Kar. It wasn’t like that, we were just talkin’.”

“What _I_ think! You… arrgh!” Karkat wanted to shove Eridan against the wall, to finish this conversation with his arm across Eridan’s throat and an elbow in his gills, shut him _up_ , make him _listen_ … “Thumbs up or thumbs down,” Karkat growled.

“Down, Kar, can’t we just talk for one glubbin’ minute?”

“Fine.” Karkat took a breath, and a step back, and very deliberately unclenched his fists. The difference between an auspistice and a bully was consent. “Fine, we’ll talk. But we’ve talked about this before. It doesn’t matter what I think, or what you think, because I absolutely fucking promise that Sollux thought you were black-macking on him again.”

“Well, how am I supposed to control what he thinks?” Eridan demanded. “Maybe you can keep track of his bullshit mood swings, but I can’t.”

“Eridan, I’m not talking about mind-reading, you don’t have to be the God of Light and Rain, here…”

“… which is good cause there ain’t no such fuckin’ thing…”

Karkat ignored him. “… just think of everything you were doing right before Sollux shouted ‘get off me,’ and don’t do any of that ever again.”

Eridan leaned against his cupe, and avoided eye contact. “Don’ take this the wrong way, but I’m kinda tired of my only quadrant action bein’ that I get nookblocked all the time.”

Karkat had to deliberately unclench his fists again, because what the everlasting fuck was the _right_ way to take that line? “He doesn’t like you black, Eridan,” Karkat said. “And you can’t make him. It’s not going to happen. I could drop off the face of the world right now and it still wouldn’t happen.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, we gotta auspistice, Sol isn’t gonna cheat on you.”

“He wouldn’t have to! If Sollux wanted to flip black he could just say so and I’d be fucking gone.”

“Bullshit,” Eridan said. “If Sollux told you he wanted t’ flip black on me he’d be flat on his back in two seconds, with you sittin’ on his chest screamin’ about what an idiot he was.”

Well, okay, yes. That did actually sound more realistic. Karkat tried a different approach. “Okay, then, if I’m such a tough guy, why aren’t I roughing you up right now? It’s sure as fuck not because I don’t have any steam to blow off.”

“It’s cause you’ve got some basic fuckin’ decency,” Eridan said, ignoring the fact that basic decency hadn’t stopped them last week. Twice.

“It’s because you said thumbs down! You said no, Eridan. That’s why. That’s important, that’s fucking basic, that’s why this whole thing works, because you can say yes or no and I listen. If you want anything with Sollux, if you even want to be friends with Sollux, you have to listen to what he wants.”

Eridan was quiet for a while. Hopefully he was thinking about what Karkat had said. “It’s hard, Kar.”

_It’s really not_ , Karkat kept himself from saying. He had a theory about Eridan, though he couldn’t actually bring it up with Eridan, who didn’t believe in reincarnation. “Did I ever tell you the difference between a creeper and a sap?”

“Ugh, I don’t care about what your stupid gangs used to call things,” Eridan said, but he folded under Karkat’s glare. “They were opposite kinds of adults, right? Creepers hurt you, saps helped you.”

“Wow. That is the most intricate shitpile of thinkpan-blistering wrongness that ever got wrapped in an ostensibly reasonable veneer of pseudofact. Creepers and saps aren’t opposites, they’re nearly identical. A smart creeper and a dumbass sap talk exactly the same way. They watch you, they get in your business, they act nice, they try to give you stuff. Mostly you had to bounce – run away – without trying to figure out which was which. But there was a difference, because saps are actually thinking about what they’re doing right now, and creepers are all about whatever they’re after. You get so you can tell them apart.”

“So I guess the moral of the story is, I’m a wigglerfucking pervert.”

Karkat facepalmed. Okay, yes, that was usually the ‘whatever they’re after’ that the creepers were after, but no that was not the fucking point, and now he regretted bringing it up. It’s not like talking about his past with normal people ever went well. 

“Is that what happened to you last night?” Eridan said. “Did you wander off to hang out with your gang again instead of coming home from work?”

“Oh my fucking gods – first of all no, second where the fuck did that even come from, and third, stop making crews of homeless kids sound like the Crips and the Bloodominators.”

“So what did happen?” Eridan asked. “You’re gone all night, which is when you shoulda been asleep what with the stupid diurnal college schedule we’re all on, you come back in some weird glubbin' clothes…” He pulled Karkat’s hood (Dave’s hood) halfway up, far enough to see it didn’t have horn-holes. “Weird glubbin' _human_ clothes. Kar, where were you?”

“I got…” Eridan didn’t know about the Blood thing. He probably wouldn’t believe in Aspects even if Karkat told him. And he at least pretended to think that Karkat had spent the first four sweeps of his life as a vicious gangster. How could Karkat explain last night to him? “I got mugged. Or they tried, anyway. He tried.” It would be easier to explain how Karkat had beaten a single attacker. That much would be believable, right? Eridan knew Karkat was stronger than he looked, at least. That had been obvious for a while, considering the games they played. “My clothes got messed up in the fight, so I went to a friend’s to change and ended up crashing there.”

Eridan stared at him suspiciously. “What kind of friend?”

“Not the ashen kind,” Karkat said, “you jealous little nookwash.”

Alarmingly, this made Eridan bristle even more. “So you’re getting out of trouble by lettin’ some perverted human in your pants? That’s disgustin’, Kar.”

“Fuck you! Even if it was any of your business, which it isn’t, and even if there were anything wrong with pailing a human, which there’s not, it’s a diamond thing.”

To Karkat’s dismay, Eridan relaxed at _diamond_ , which he hadn’t done for _not ashen_. But he still said, “That’s even worse, you know how humans are. Sluttin’ around, pulling honest trolls into a pile and then actin’ like it wasn’t anything important. There oughta be a law.”

The same stereotype had crossed Karkat’s mind last night, and it had turned out to be completely wrong. If anyone had been a… “You bigoted overgroomed sack of salty shit, what the fuck right do you have to – no, you know what? I don’t even have to defend him to you. You’ve never even talked to him, even though you must have hit on every single other person at that stupid frat party you dragged us to, including the humans, you steaming hypocrite. Fuck you fucking sideways.”

“Wait, who…” Karkat stormed out, tossed the sock from the doorknob in Eridan’s face, and slammed the door. Through it, he heard, “Are you datin' the _DJ_?”

Karkat went back to his own room, slamming that door, too. That was a bad idea, which should have led to Karkat feeling guilty for making noise when Sollux was trying to sleep. However, Sollux was not trying to sleep. He was at his desk, fully clothed, like the king asshole of Poor-Listening-Skills-itania. “Oh, no,” Karkat said, “I’m not going to take shit from you, too.”

“Fuck off, KK, I had homework to do and Fishface interrupted it.” Sollux didn’t look up from his math problems, but he flashed a thumbs-up without putting down his slide rule. Oh fuck yes. 

Karkat stomped over, grabbed the front of Sollux’s shirt, yanked him out of his chair and slammed him against the wall. He didn’t slam too hard, he wanted Sollux rattled, not concussed. Sollux squawked and tried to pry Karkat’s hands open. This was about as successful as if Sollux had tried to pry a brick out of the wall with his fingertips. Then he tried to push Karkat away, like he had to Eridan earlier. But he telegraphed it, and Karkat braced with one casual foot. Sollux couldn’t budge him.

“Why do you think it’s okay to treat yourself like crap?” Karkat crooned, his voice so soft it was harder to hear than a whisper. “What could have possibly given you the slightest impression that I would let you do that? I don’t let anyone else treat you like crap. I don’t even let Eridan treat you like crap, and at least he has the excuse of being an emotionally constipated dumbass douchebag racist fuckstick who might manage to have half your brains if he ever stopped thinking about his own bulge.”

Sollux was shivering, but he tried to smirk. “Geez, KK, taking things out on the wrong guy much?”

“You have no idea,” Karkat muttered. Then he got back into character and yanked Sollux down by his collar so they were nose to nose. “No, shut up. You talk when I ask you a question and then you call me sir, you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Sollux croaked.

“Get down on your knees, and put your hands up.” When he didn’t move right away, Karkat pulled down on his shirt some more, until he _had_ to drop to his knees. “Hands. Up.” Sollux made a face, but raised his arms. Karkat pulled his shirt right off. 

Gods, Sollux was pretty like this. Lean and tense and surly and barely restrained… If Karkat popped a wiggler right now it would be right at Sollux’s eye level, and this relationship already had more quadrant vacillation than a soap opera on sweeps week. Karkat focused on something relevant. “Shit, you’re skinny.”

“Come on, _sir_ , I just want to do my homework. I fucked up, it’s due tomorrow.” None of that was the safe word. Sollux’s hands, still obediently up in the air, could easily have signaled a stop, but they didn’t.

“I didn’t ask a question.” Sollux flinched. “And don’t call yourself a fuckup. No, shut up, I know what you meant. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Lunch, sir.”

“I didn’t ask what, I asked when. What time.”

“Um.” Sollux had to stop and think about it. “Midnight?”

Karkat looked up at the ceiling. “Oh gods. See what I have to put up with? Stay there, Sollux. Hands behind your back.” There was a box of grubnola bars in Sollux’s desk, the two-layer kind with honey in the middle. Karkat got the box out and unwrapped one. “Eat.” Sollux kept his hands behind him and let Karkat feed him the first bar, but balked when he unwrapped another one. “Eat it, spongeleak. If you went to lab and tried to treat the bees the way you treat yourself they’d fucking flunk you.” He held Sollux’s jaw still with one hand and fed him with the other. “There. Feel better?”

“Yes, sir,” Sollux grumbled. But then he leaned forward and gave Karkat a quick kiss on the knuckles before he could pull his hand away.

“Aww, good boy.” Karkat gave him a nudge on the cheek. “Stand up and take your pants off, it’s ‘cupe time.” Sollux stripped down to his boxers, and Karkat helped him into his recuperacoon. “Say your prayers.”

“You don’t even like prayers, KK… sir.”

“You do. Say ‘em, and then say whatever, we’re done.”

Sounding bemused, Sollux recited, “Maid of Quartz and Melody, though you once died we still remember you. Merciful guide of spirits, though I must die may you remember me.” Meanwhile Karkat found Sollux’s little orange prescription bottle and put a pill in the little slot on his cupe. The people who knew that Sollux took sopor in his slime included the people whose names were on the bottle and Karkat. Before Karkat found out, Sollux hadn’t actually been taking it very often, no matter what the doctor said. “So where did you go last night?” Sollux asked.

Karkat might as well keep his stories straight. Eridan and Sollux did sometimes talk to each other like normal trolls, as unlikely as that might seem right now. “Some fucking dumbass tried to mug me.”

“Shit, are you okay?” Karkat heard a squelchy sloshing sound as Sollux instantly started getting out of his ‘cupe. Who knew why, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do.

“I’m fine, I’m always fine, lie down you incredible shitsponge. He chickened out when I fought back.” Speaking of which, Karkat pulled the sickle out of his waistband and tucked it out of sight behind his own ‘cupe. He didn’t much care if Sollux saw it, but sometimes the RA came in, and that would be serious trouble. “My clothes got fucked up, that’s all. I went to a friend’s place to change and crashed there.” Karkat sat down with his back against Sollux’s ‘cupe.

“Heheh, that’s more like what I thought happened. Flushed or pale?”

“Pale,” Karkat said, and then, “Hey, why couldn’t it just be a friend? Or pitch, for that matter?”

“You wouldn’t ask for help from ‘just a friend.’ And before you showed weakness to a rival you would literally die, even though you make us do it all the time. You’re a fucking hypocrite, sir.”

“You’re a snarky little shit,” Karkat said fondly.

“Douche.” Sollux was starting to sound sleepy.

“Asshole.”

“Love you, KK.”

“Love you too. Sleep tight.” Karkat listened to Sollux breathe for a while. The fight with Eridan was still spinning around in the back of his head, but it was a little less immediate now. At least Karkat had taken care of _someone_. Being mad at Eridan could wait until tomorrow. Gods, they were such a couple of disasters.

When Sollux was completely asleep, he had a wheezy little two-tone snore, just loud enough that the room didn’t feel empty. When Karkat heard it, he stood up, stretched, and grabbed a novel from his shelf, since a movie would be too noisy. Since he wanted mindless relaxation, he picked something where the characters spent a lot of time being dramatically shirtless and the narration used the word “ravish” unironically. And since he wanted to take his mind _off_ of all the drama of the past twenty-four hours, he picked one where the main relationship was flushed.

As Karkat was about to sit down with his book, he glanced at the phone. It would wake Sollux up if it rang. Even on sopor he was a light sleeper. And it was going to ring, Dave had promised to call.

Karkat sighed. Dave really wanted to talk, and okay, so did Karkat, but Sollux really needed to sleep. Twenty-three hours, good gods. Karkat unplugged the phone.


	5. Interlude 1: Voicemail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You have. Twenty. Eight. Billion. Nine. Hundred. Seventy. Six. Million. Three. Hundred. Nineteen. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Four. New messages."  
> “Fuck.”

Dave was lying on his couch, staring at the ceiling. He was bemoaning the paucity of a culture that had not yet discovered the YouTube kitten video. If he wanted to veg out he was going to have to watch _television_. Over an _antenna_. 

He was definitely not waiting until he could call Karkat without being weird. That would be stupid, because first of all if he was going to waste time anyway he could just skip ahead, and second because he wasn’t a twelve year old girl.

Not that Rose or Jade would have gotten all swoony and nervous and awkward about a stupid phone call at any age. But they didn’t count, they were awesome. Dave just didn’t want to be associated with the fundamental essence of twelve-year-old-girl-ness, which… Dave’s home-schooled ass had learned about from the internet, he guessed? And Bro’s put-downs.

That was probably kind of messed up. Which in turn probably meant that Dave could call Karkat if he wanted to.

( _You’re allowed to care about me, you stonefaced dipshit,_ Karkat/another Karkat had said once, years ago/thousands of years ago. _I won’t hurt you for it._ )

Dave de-capchalogued his cell phone - neither captchaloguing nor cell phones were things these days, but Dave was alone in his apartment - and dialed Karkat’s number. He got beeped at. “Damn it. I mean, don’t actually damn it. Was that even a thing we had? I don’t want any actual hypothetical divine wrath on the stupid busy signal.” He just kind of wanted to hear Karkat’s voice. Oh, hey. He hit a couple buttons on the phone and put it back to his ear. He’d almost forgotten he had this, but it should work…

"You have. Twenty. Eight. Billion. Nine. Hundred. Seventy. Six. Million. Three. Hundred. Nineteen. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Four. New messages."

“Fuck.”

“First message: NAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAK…”

“What. Why the hell are there even… Filter it, give me just the ones from Karkat Vantas.”

“One. Thousand. Six. Hundred. Thirty-five. New messages.”

Whoa, that was kind of a lot… no, wait, there had been Karkat Vantases pretty much continuously since the system was set up. Karkats Vantas? Anyway, most of those messages would be old. “Just from the last fifteen years.” Karkat was older than that, but Dave didn’t want to hear baby talk and he really didn’t want to hear the previous Karkat’s last words or anything. The previous Karkat had been a hot mess, and Dave had... not exactly succeeded in helping with that.

“Four. New messages. First message.”

“Are you really there?” Oh, holy shit, Karkat sounded young. Younger than that homeless kid they’d run into today. “Fuck.” Dave snickered. Precocious little guy. “It’s just, that one sap at the temple said you were patron god of kids who get hurt.” Oh no. “My leg doesn’t hurt anymore and I can move it and stuff, so I don’t know if this counts. But I haven’t been able to get any food. That hurts. I’m hungry and it really… fucking hurts. So if you’re really there, and there’s any extra that I could get without hurting anyone… shit…”

The recording ended, and the stupid robotic machine voice said, “End of message.” Dave closed his eyes, and tried to breathe. Karkat had sounded so young. That message had to be from years and years ago. Karkat had obviously been okay in the end, even though no one had ever answered… “Next message,” the voicemail robot said.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. He’s so great. He’s big and strong and he gave me food and we get our own apartment, holy shit I actually have a lusus now _thank you_ , uh, I mean, praise You, Knight of Heat and Clock, um, things, whatever. I mean. Thank you.”

“End of message.” Well, that was happier, Dave guessed, but it didn’t make him feel better. If a kid was ecstatic about someone finally taking basic care of him, what did that say about all his life before then? “Next message.”

“I’ve been thinking about the kids I used to run with. Gamzee and them. Are they… I hope you’re still taking care of them. As much as you ever fucking did.” Karkat’s voice was cracking. “Couldn’t you just give all of them a lusus? What’s so special about me? If you actually care, why don’t you just…”

“End of message.” Dave had a feeling that he should hang up the phone, that this was messing him up somehow. He kept listening. “Next message.”

“… and fuck _you_ , and…”

“End of new messages.” What, had Karkat just been going down the list? Dave would only get the words that were sincerely addressed to him. He could absolutely imagine Karkat walking through a temple and fervently cursing them all out in order as he passed their altars. He wondered how long ago that had been, though. It had been too short to tell much from the voice.

Dave laid there for a while. The voicemail machine didn’t say anything, whether because it was waiting for a command or because after a hundred bazillion clock cycles it had finally developed some artificial tact, Dave didn’t know. Dave wasn’t really aware of any thinking going on in his head, but at the end of it he had an idea, which was that he should stop being such a lazy asshole.

“New messages,” Dave said, “sort by most recent. Any sender.” Twenty-eight billion was quite a backlog, but he could at least start. And he actually did have forever, so.

“That’s indeterminate,” the voicemail machine said, finally ditching the stupid robot voice. It sounded both like Dave’s brother and like a thirteen-year-old kid, neither of which made Dave feel better. “There were nine for you I was actively receiving when you said that.”

“Then just _pick_ one, Hal.”

“Okay.”

“Please, god, any god, I don’t care, I have to find her.” Another little-troll-boy voice. It sounded like he was whispering, though the Breath power or computer processing or whatever made it come out at the same volume as all Karkat’s prayers. It wasn’t Karkat, but the voice still sounded familiar. “I was only gone a couple hours, she can’t be gone. I need her, please, gods, I’m scared, just help me find her.”

Dave rolled to his feet. Something was clenched inside him, and he pretended it wasn’t there. “That’s a thing I can do. Sender?”

“Rufioh Nitram.”

“Thought so,” Dave said, and tapped the phone off just as it tried to say, “Dave…”


End file.
